This was a little test I did for a short I will be making. I was testing out the rigg and it was supposed to be a little something for Crimbo but better late than never right? Anyways the character was modeled by SEB http://www.hyperjump.de/ and the character was designed by a Francis Pang. C+C welcome

http://lemontea.temp.powweb.com/john/fred_sad.jpg

Please click on link to Download

http://lemontea.temp.powweb.com/john/avi/Xmas_Final_qt.zip

Enjoy

smooth

01 January 2005, 08:21 AM

i trully enjoyed it....
can u tell me how can u fit the voice wich the of the man with the facial animation, is there any tutorial bout that ?

kustaaV

01 January 2005, 02:40 PM

looks great as allways John!
lots of good stuff going on there. i really like the accents that u have, for example on the "park the cars" that upNdown with the hips and on the "ill be outside" the hand and body wave.
the gesture on "check.." feels bit too exaggerated maybe bit too confident for the mood he his in. though the build up before it, works really nice.

keep rocking!

Kustaa

disrupt

01 January 2005, 02:56 PM

Hey john, I saw your name as this thread starter and had to take a look. I love your stuff. I think all your acting choices are pretty nice in this one. But there is somthing not right in his face. For some reason the emotion in his face isn't matching his gestures or the audio for me. Yes, his face seems sort of lifeless. Maybe part of it is because the whites of his eyes don't really seem white. I think that you just need to push the emotion a bit more to be clear. I am not sure if he is sad because everyone is missing the point of christmas, or he's trying to make a joke? Whatever emotion you are trying to show, I think it just needs to be stronger in his poses and facial expressions. I don't think there is anything really wrong with his motion, maybe just his emotion. The part that stands out the most is when he looks up right before he says, "check the luggage." That look upward seems dead. Partially I think, because his eyes are almost rolled up in his head. You know he looks tired or stoned or something. Whatever that feeling is(It is hard to nail it down), is causing you problems throughout. Hopefully that makes some kind of sense, and hopefully it is somewhat helpful.

patbb

01 January 2005, 09:22 PM

hey there, I like it, i think overall the animation is nice.

But one think that really bothers me is the eyes, first of all there is too much pupil shifts and too obvious,
then you gotta work on your blinks.
Overall I think all blinks are too slow.
Starting with the first blink, when the lids open you cannot see the pupil and it look really creepy, you gotta goo frame by frame for all your animations and make sure to fix that everywhere.

The second blink which is a double blink just plain doesn't work, tweak it, make it faster, specially the first of the double blink... play with it until it work..

Theres a wink in the middle of the animation, it look very weird and out of place.

as for the body, everything look nice.

You could try to break the joints a little bit more, and keep a look for the arcs for the arms...

Also you could animate the fingers alot more, try opening the fingers to break down a big arm move, and offset all of the fingers, you'll be surprise by how much little details like that will add to your animation...

Sorry about the long crit, but this is the kind of crit i receive everyday at work... bit less polite ;)

good job.

-p

Rodi

01 January 2005, 11:43 PM

Finally some animation on the front page, nice one J-

alexyork

01 January 2005, 11:59 PM

nice to see you plugged at last John! been a long time in the waiting that has :) excellent work as usual. you're really improving all the time. this is a very nice, fluid piece. my only crit is the guy walking in front of the main character - i feel it detracts a little. but other than that, top notch! the snow was a nice touch, too.

congrats again on the plug m8 :thumbsup:

Skiwanny

01 January 2005, 12:08 AM

Sacrebleu ! Nice to see you on the front page Johnny...

daraand

01 January 2005, 12:28 AM

Im gonna agree with patbb and disrupt on this one, they really hit most of the points

This is what christmas is all about.

ok i just dont get what kind of emotion you want there? I mean I udnerstand WHAT you want, but its not conveyed? Is he goign from happy to sad because he's being ignored? (context clues tell us so, people wlaking by, his eyebrows, which in speed are fine but in pose i think could be exxagerated more)

Why do i say that? the first frame he has a happy like look to him. Are you trying to make subetle implication where he's forcing a smile rather than truely smiling?

The rest of the end pretty much follows well though, and I sitll have osme issues on the eyebrows being abrupt.. but I just wnated to poitn out that beginning

I know itsj ust a test so I know its not perfected yet :D

Ognus

01 January 2005, 12:31 AM

Awesome. How long does a little clip like that take? Isnt that guy gonna freeze?

The staging of no-one paying attention to him as he's talking is spot on for the feel, too.

Looking forward to seeing more!

Cutiehoney

01 January 2005, 02:21 AM

Seems nice and a nice render.

He's overanimated and doesn't seem to be acting more like hitting poses.

His eyes are darting too much. It's good to have but, it's a bit distracting as your eyes usually do that if you're scared or looking at an object.

Can you get a better audio on him, since everything else is so finished?

More followthrough and offset some of the keys for better flow

Good effort though!

Nigel B

01 January 2005, 03:20 AM

Hi, I'm new to here, but got a look at this piece and think it is very nice - not sure about eyes and all the teeth showing all the time, otherwise i loved it.

thewave

01 January 2005, 03:35 AM

If you are going to be using this as a part of a greater whole I do hope that you have multiple takes on the audio so that you can refine the quality on it. I like the background chatter because it really sets the feeling of the space.
As for the animation, he looks confused and rather disoriented. As though he feels that nobody could care if he was there or not. If this is the feeling that you are trying to convey then congratulations...if not, you may want to tone down the sudden movements and moke them flow in a more relaxed pattern, have his eyes focus on a particular object, and maybe have his head move in a slight tilt outside (like people sometimes do when the are explaining to others where they intend to go next).

Very well executed thus far though...I would like to see the finished piece so I can have a better feeling of what is going on in the scene.That's all.

AdamT

01 January 2005, 05:24 AM

Terrific overall. I agree with the comments above about the eyes. The very small pupils and extreme movements give him that crazy horse look that doesn't fit the action.

supremo

01 January 2005, 05:58 AM

Okay, I disagree with most of the posts here. I thought that his expressions and twitchy movements fit just right with the mood of the piece. You did a great job of capturing real emotion in an animation - he seemed pretty damn real for an animation just for that reason!

xeetstreet

01 January 2005, 06:11 AM

Has anyone seen 'National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation'? Everyone is talking like you recorded the audio!

samankhorram

01 January 2005, 08:21 AM

you did it very well .every time I review this piece I find a new interesting things

in his emotion .I can feel this character perfectly well and it is anough for me.

eek

01 January 2005, 09:42 AM

Hey John facial rigs on its way, should be a week awayish. It'll give you the kinda control you need for the short.(btw ill post some pics soon if im allowed)

eek

sheb

01 January 2005, 10:03 AM

w0000t!

the lighting is horrible! actually everything except the model.. ;)

no,no, im kidding of course! COOL man, good to seeing it getting somewhere!!

s.e.b

Flecucos

01 January 2005, 10:39 AM

I think it should be better if you overlap a bit more.
In my opinion, he "overflow". Try to keep the poses 1 or 2 frames more.
is only an opinion... and my first reply!!

John Lee

01 January 2005, 10:47 AM

Sorry for the late response

mothermachine: Cheers man

Skiwanny: Thanks for all the feed back WIllster

agentJ: Yeah your right, the feeling I wanted to convey is kind of like a false feeling of happyness thatís why I animated the body quite tame on" this is what xmas is all about " and contrasted that with a fake smile this will be a lot better once I have the Proper face Rigg.

Ognus: Well I was kind of doing this in my spare time after work. It's hard in games as you never have any down time. All in all I think I spent around a week working evenings for everything. Thatís filming the reference, animating, tweaking riggs, morphs etc.... Is he cold yeah man he turned into an ice cube

andy_maxman: Cheers man.

aaraaf: It was supposed to be a kind of talking to myself embarrassed wink/ head nod if that makes any sense, maybe I'll make it more clear. Cheers :)

Cutiehoney: Yeah I wanted to convey thinking. hhmm.... I guess I over did it. Well the audio is from a film. But i have tested some other audio on him. I can post that if you like?

Nigel B: I'll tone it down see how it looks

thewave: Yeah it was the feeling i wanted :).

AdamT: Yeah Iíll tone them down.

supremo: Great minds think alike hehe :p

jujex: Well we had a an ex Pixar guy come here to teach us some stuff and one of the things he said was to exaggerate movements then tone them down thatís how Pixar get Some nice Subtle movements which makes their characters seem so alive.

I watched this yesterday, but I really didn't have anything valuable to say. But I figured I'd let you know that I enjoyed it anyways, I think you did an excellent job. Someone mentioned the eye movements being bad, but I disagree. They didn't strike me as unecessary or odd. Sometimes his fingers seemed a bit weird maybe, but I think that's all I can say.

maybe I should elaborate

They aren't too fat... maybe they seemed too spread apart, or too... Open... I'm sorry haha, I shouldn't try critiquing what I'm not aware of. At any rate, good job!

Steve

ai_jai

01 January 2005, 01:39 PM

Alright man,

First off, I dissagree with many of the comments made so far about him being over animated, not animated enough and the fact that so many of the crits so far have been so mixed and varied means its purely just opinions and peoples personal preferences coming out. So here's mine

The only problem I have with the acting animation is the communication/reaction between the 1st walking character and Fred the main character. If Fred is supposed to be being ignored right from the start then fine, if he is suppose to be being ignored part way through, I.E just after the 1st extra character walks past (as this would fit in with the change in the characters voice in the audio), then I think this needs needs directly including in the animation. I think it would read much better if he made an effort to communicate with the 1st guy that walks past, and then when he realises he's just been ignored, he reacts to that and then his emotion turns sad. Having seen earlier versions of this acting animation peice I know that the characters that walk infront of Fred were NOT there during the animation stage (naughty naughty John Boy!) but that you added them in just before you rendered it out. So if they weren't there in the animation stage then I don't buy that Fred can be animated to have any good interaction with the 2 extra characters. And I know you agree with me!! ;)

When I saw an early version that wasn't rendered and DIDN'T have the extra 2 characters in you know I liked it alot, and I had NO crits for it. Another fine peice to put in your collection of top rate acting pieces, but then you showed me the rendered version with these extra charcters that came from no where! Then I knew I could smell something fishy:P.

My advice (what I want you to do),

1. Render the 09 version you showed me, with NO extra characters, and see how that one goes down.

2. Go back to the very early stages of this acting peice and add the 2 extra characters so Fred has them to interact with while you animate him.

Do any of these (preferably both) and I might just do some animation!

Garma

01 January 2005, 03:27 PM

link isn't working anymore :(

CuTnPaste

01 January 2005, 03:32 PM

yeah...broken link for me,too ....
:(

Adriano-Zanetti

01 January 2005, 04:16 PM

really glad to see an animation on the front page... haven't been here for long and it's the first time for me.
Rendering isn't really so so neat, but animation is well done, if you were wondering about your skinning, I don't see anything wrong with it right here, seems to be a good job too.

Way to go !

pe@ce

kerrybrines

01 January 2005, 08:56 PM

Link Isn't working it seems I have run out of space any chance that some one could Mirror this for me plz :)

THanks

John Lee

01 January 2005, 11:36 PM

Yeah i think i've used up all my web space. I'll try and get something sorted. In the mean time would any one be kind enough to mirror it for me please?

Thanks :)

alexyork

01 January 2005, 11:56 PM

NEW MIRROR:

http://www.alexyork.co.uk/anims/Xmas_Final_qt.zip

I have no idea how long my bandwidth will last, so grab it while you can :)

John Lee

01 January 2005, 09:32 AM

Thanks mother machine :)

ai_jai

01 January 2005, 12:01 PM

The link on the 1st page is working fine for me...i downloaded it with Internet Explorer and Firefox, Firefox did it much better though(biased opinion). John hasnt changed a thing about the link so it must have been his web server that went down or something...anyways....it works fine now!:thumbsup:

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